Anniversary Edgar – or Ted – Codd is one of the most influential figures in computing. Born 90 years today*, Codd – who passed away in 2003 – was the man who first conceived of the relational model for database management.

"There were no cross-industry standards for query, never mind for third-party tools, and data portability was near impossible unless both data stores shared the same database structure. In order to query data, you required routines written by humans to very specific functions.

If you were working with databases, you also needed to know different languages and structures and were pretty much married to the individual or company that had built your database."

... 40 years pass ...

"There’s no common NoSQL standard: you build on a database-by-database basis. The databases have either been developed by big companies or by database and programming whizzes and are still growing up in terms of their ease of use and management for ordinary end users."

I'm not crazy about the SQL language (typical IBM sludge) but what I love about RDBMSes is how people who aren't programmers but work with programmers can participate in discussions with an understanding of a data model. Compare this to OO modeling attempts, which IMO have completely failed to bridge the gap between designers and programmers on the one side and managers, users, business analysts on the other. At best, you can communicate around a use case diagram and associated document, but I can't see it having much particular advantage over less formal communication.